THE RIDDLE CLUB THROUGHTHE HOLIDAYSCHAPTER ILOOKING AHEAD
THE RIDDLE CLUB THROUGHTHE HOLIDAYS
“Ididhave ten cents, but I spent it,” explained Ward Larue carefully.
Fred Williamson shook the bank he held in his hand till the contents rattled.
“What did you spend it for?” he demanded.
“A magnifying glass,” admitted Ward. “I needed one.”
“I never saw such a boy for spending money,” complained Fred. “You will end up in the poorhouse, see if you don’t!”
“I guess if I paid ten cents in for Riddle Club dues, it wouldn’t save me from going to the poorhouse,” objected Ward.
“No, I don’t think it would, either,” said Jess Larue, Ward’s sister.
Fred gazed at the circle in despair.
“You don’t any of you have the right ideaabout these club dues,” he informed them. “You seem to think I want the money to go off and spend on myself. There’s no use in having a treasurer, unless you’re willing to put something in the treasury.”
“Oh, but, Fred! we are willing,” protested Polly Marley, president of the Riddle Club. “Of course we’re willing. The only reason I didn’t pay to-day was because I didn’t have ten cents.”
“And why didn’t you?” said Fred, for all the world, Ward thought, like the orators who spoke in River Bend on the Fourth of July. “Why didn’t you?”
Polly was not awed by Fred’s rhetoric. She laughed at him.
“I didn’t have ten cents,” she giggled, “because I loaned it to some one.”
“Artie, I suppose,” grumbled Fred. He considered that his position as treasurer gave him the right to ask any amount of personal questions when dues were not forthcoming.
“No-o, it wasn’t Artie,” said Polly, still smiling.
“But Artie hasn’t paid his dues, either,” declared Fred, fixing that small boy with a stern eye. “Where’s your ten cents, Artie?”
Artie Marley, Polly’s brother, wriggled uneasily.
“Now——” he stammered, “now, I had ten cents. But I haven’t got it now. I’ll pay you the next meeting, Fred.”
“What did you do with the dime you had?” asked Fred.
“I spent it for ink,” said Artie, solemnly. “If I’m going to write a book, I have to write it in ink, don’t I?”
Artie Marley was much given to reading books, and now his modest desire was to write one.
“I don’t think you need a whole bottle of ink to write a book with,” said Fred, judiciously. “You could have borrowed your mother’s ink and saved the ten cents.”
Artie gazed at him with respect. He had had the same thought himself, he declared.
“But when I took the bottle from Mother’s desk, I spilled most of it on the stairs,” he confided. “And so I had to take half of the new ink I bought to fill her bottle up so she wouldn’t miss it.”
“Well, the next time,” Fred instructed him, “you want to buy something, you pay your dues first. You ought to have some sense of—of—some sense of duty!” he concluded magnificently.
“I paid my dues!” exclaimed Fred’s twin sister, Margy. “Didn’t I, Fred?”
The air with which Margy Williamson said thiswas too much for Jess. In spite of Polly’s warning tug at her dress she spoke “right out in meeting,” as her grandmother would have said.
“The reason you paid your dues, Margy Williamson,” said Jess, clearly, “is because you borrowed the money from Polly. That’s why she couldn’t pay hers.”
Margy flushed and Fred frowned.
“I liked lending it to Margy,” said Polly, hurriedly. “If I’d kept it, likely as not I would have spent it. Margy’s going to pay me back next week.”
“What I don’t understand,” announced Fred, still frowning, “is why this club is so hard up. We paid dues before we went to camp, and though I won’t say you fell over yourselves to pay, I didn’t have the trouble I’m having now.”
And Fred wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, as though he found his duties almost too much for him.
“Well, we didn’t pay dues all summer,” said Polly, slowly, “and I think we forgot—If you get out of a habit, you know, it’s hard to pick it up again. Didn’t any one pay this time, Fred?”
“Only Margy,” said Fred, gloomily, “and she borrowed the money.”
“Didn’t you?” struck in Artie, quickly.
“Well,” said Fred, lamely, “I had to contributeto the post-card fund in school. That took my dime.”
Ward and Artie fell into each other’s arms and tumbled over on the floor. It was their way of expressing delight.
“All the same,” declared Fred, raising his voice above the laughter that greeted his confession, “the next time this club meets, no one is going to be allowed to leave this room without paying their dues.”
Polly Marley was a tactful girl, and she knew when to change a subject.
“We haven’t decided about Hallowe’en,” she reminded them.
“That’s so,” agreed Fred, with relief. “Are we going to have a party?”
“Mother doesn’t want Ward and me to dress up and just go around,” said Jess. “So I think we’d better have a party—just us, you know. We don’t need any one else.”
The six members of the Riddle Club smiled at one another. They had the best of good times when “just us” and no outsiders were invited. Weren’t they back from a summer in camp where they proved their theory once more? Their tanned faces and bright eyes showed what a healthful summer it had been and their good spirits spoke for their happiness.
“It’s our turn to have a party,” said Margy Williamson, eagerly. “Polly and Artie had us Hallowe’en last year. We can have the kitchen at our house and do anything we please.”
“I thought you’d come to our house; but it’s all right that way,” said Polly. “Shall we dress up?”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s one bit of fun unless we dress up and wear false-faces,” declared Margy.
“We’ll know each other—can’t help it, with only six of us,” demurred Fred.
“That’s all right—we can pretend to be fooled,” said Jess Larue.
So it was decided to wear costumes and false-faces.
“Is the window open?” asked Polly, suddenly, with a shiver.
“Closed,” reported Fred. “Gee! there is a blast coming from somewhere.”
“The door’s swung open,” said Artie, rising to close it.
“I think it’s awfully cold up here,” said Margy, with customary frankness.
She wore a sweater, and so did the other girls, but there was no denying the clubroom in the loft of the barn was chilly.
“I’ve just thought!” went on Margy. “Whatshall we do when it’s winter? We’ll freeze to death up here.”
Jess looked distressed. The room was in her father’s barn, and she had never considered the advent of cold weather. The Riddle Club had been formed in the spring, and the meetings had been held—until the trip to camp—very comfortably in the little room.
“That’s so,” said Polly now. “We can’t meet here in winter. I don’t see what we are going to do.”
“It won’t be winter for perfect ages,” declared the hopeful Jess. “To-day is what Dora calls an ‘odd day.’ She was saying this morning that we’ll probably have warm weather again. There’s Indian summer—we haven’t had that yet. I don’t think it’s really cold up here—do you?”
“Not really cold,” answered Polly. “But I’m thinking of December. It will be cold then.”
“How did the horses and cows keep warm when they stayed in this barn?” questioned Artie. “Were they cold, too?”
“Of course not!” retorted Ward. “Horses and cows are never cold. They like cold weather.”
“They keep each other warm,” said Fred, remembering something he had heard. “The animal heat in their bodies keeps them warm. Besides,farmers put blankets on their horses in the winter time.”
“We could wrap up in blankets,” suggested Polly.
“My mother is very particular about her blankets,” said Margy. “She won’t let us take them for tents, and she has to have them washed a certain way. I don’t believe she would ever let us have them out here in the barn.”
The other members of the Riddle Club were equally sure that their mothers would object to lending blankets for club meetings.
“Well, there ought to be some way,” said Ward, thoughtfully. “Couldn’t we put in a furnace?”
“A furnace!” chorused the club. “What kind of a furnace?”
“Oh, a furnace,” repeated Ward. “A regular furnace, you know. That would keep us nice and warm.”
“And where,” asked Fred, in some amazement, “would we get the money to buy a furnace?”
“I don’t think they cost much,” said Ward. “Perhaps we have enough in your bank.”
Fred groaned in anguish and Polly laughed.
“That’s it,” said Fred, bitterly. “Never want to pay a cent in, but always willing to let it all go out. Take the last penny in the bank—whatdo you care? Why should dues worry you? They’re only something to throw away.”
“Don’t spend your old dues, if you don’t want to,” snapped Ward. “I don’t care whether you put in a furnace or not; I’m never cold. It’s the girls who are making a fuss.”
“A furnace costs a heap of money,” put in Polly, wisely. “We never could afford that. Besides, Mr. Larue wouldn’t let us. We might set fire to the barn.”
“Well, how about that old gasolene stove that Mother threw away last week?” suggested Artie. “There’s nothing the matter with it, except it leaks.”
“How much more do you want the matter with it?” inquired Fred. “No gasolene stove comes into this clubroom while I’m a member.”
“Then what shall we have?” asked Jess, sadly.
“I was just thinking that an electric heater wouldn’t be so bad,” said Fred. “We could run wires from the pole out in front and connect it with the heater in here. We could light the barn with the same current, too, and perhaps have meetings at night. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“We could have our Hallowe’en party out here,” cried Polly. “Think of having it in the barn! Such heaps of fun!”
“I don’t see where you expect to get the money,” said Ward, coldly. “If we can’t touch those precious old dues, how are you going to have electric lights? Mr. Brewer had them put in his barn last week and it cost more than fifty dollars. He told Daddy so. They didn’t have to run the wires as far as we shall, either.”
“Have we fifty dollars in the bank?” asked Jess, curiously.
“Nowhere near,” Fred informed her. “I guess that knocks out the electric heater idea. The only thing I can see that we can do is to bring hot water bottles with us, when it is cold.”
“We can have an ice hut and crawl inside,” giggled Polly. “The Eskimos manage somehow, and we will, too, I guess.”
“Anyway, it isn’t cold yet, not real cold,” argued Jess. “And when it does snow, it will bank the window and make it warmer. I don’t believe we’ll need any kind of a heater or furnace.”
“It’s going to be dark earlier every time, too,” said Margy, who had a habit of looking ahead. “In December it will be pitch dark long before five o’clock. There’s Mrs. Pepper feeding her hens now. I don’t believe it’s much after four.”
“Here, chick, chick, chick!” they could hearMrs. Pepper, a neighbor, calling. “Here, chick, chick, chick!”
“You never catch Carrie feeding those hens,” said Jess, peering through the window. “Oh, say, what do you know——” Her voice trailed off without completing the sentence and her dark eyes began to dance.
Polly was ready to ask her what she was thinking, but the boys wanted the meeting adjourned. So in a few minutes they were rushing down the loft ladder, Ward having first carefully locked the clubroom door.
“Remember, everybody come over to our house after school to-morrow,” said Margy, as the group separated at the door, the two Larues to go into their house to supper and the other four to cross the street to the Marley and the Williamson houses, which were next door to each other. “We’ll plan about the Hallowe’en party.”